Last week, Dailytech reported
that California's State senate had blocked employers from requiring
their employees to get "chipped"--implanted with an RFID
chip that would allow for radio identification and tracking.

Now
in addition to the privacy concerns, a
new report by the Associate Press has brought to light
serious doubts on RFID implants' medical safety.

The report
details how numerous studies on RFID implants in animal test
subjects, starting in the mid-1990s, revealed that the implants led
to a significant increase in malignant tumor growth.

Keith
Johnson, a retired toxological pathologist who led one of these
studies, in 1996 at Dow Chemical Co., when interviewed in the report
stated that he had no doubts about whether RFID was to blame for the
increased incidence of cancer. He is quoted as clearly stating,
"The transponders were the cause of the tumors."

The
findings were reviewed by top cancer specialists, who found the
results disturbing. They cautioned people that these tests were
performed on animals, so that they were not necessarily applicable in
humans, however, most felt additional research was a necessity.
Some went as far to say that they would not allow family members to
receive implants.

Currently about 2,000 people worldwide have
received RFID chips implants, according to VeriChip,
the leading manufacturer of FDA-approved RFID implants, including a
couple who were ordered
to do so by their employer.

Verichip commented that they
were "not aware of any studies that have resulted in malignant
tumors in laboratory rats, mice and certainly not dogs or cats."

The
company also, sells RFID chips for animals.

A significant
detail to these studies is that many of them were not intended to
study the correlation between RFID chip implanting to cancer--rather,
during research on a separate topic the increased cancer rates were
high enough to catch the researchers' attention and allow them to
draw a clear conclusion that the chip was causing the increased
cancer rate.

The AP report goes on to discuss the
suspect nature of the FDA's approval of VeriChip's human RFID
implant. The FDA is overseen by the Department of Health and
Human Sciences, which at the time of the approval, was headed by
Tommy
Thompson.

Just two weeks after the Jan. 10, 2005 approval
of the device, Tommy Thompson resigned his post with the department
and within five months assumed a position at VeriChip. He
received stock options and cash compensation for his newly acquired
position.

Thompson, until recently a candidate for the 2008
Republican presidential nomination, recently denied in an interview
having any familiarity with VeriChip before his resignation.

The
FDA refused to comment on which studies it reviewed when approving
the device.

A recent AMA report which lauded RFID implants,
claimed to be entirely unaware of the studies correlating the implant
to cancer. Dr. Steven Stack, an AMA board member, said he had
never heard the studies ever mentioned before.

As Dr. Stack
had knowledge of the Department of Health and Human Sciences
committee's review of the implant, pending FDA approval, this
statement would indicate that the Committee did not take these
studies into account during its approval process.

More
research needs to be done before final conclusions are drawn, but as
its dirty laundry comes to light, the controversial practice of RFID
implanting and its FDA approval has received another major setback.

“So far we have not seen a single Android device that does not infringe on our patents." -- Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith